


Fuck me -- That would be ill advised commander

by Ashildr_Dorchadon



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: HC that the dwarves are culturally very queerphobic, If everyone is gay now, M/M, Pink cloud is doing things to people and their brains, TW:internalised queerphobia, is that so much of an issue really?, tw: queerphobia, tw:attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-02-23 11:33:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23944231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashildr_Dorchadon/pseuds/Ashildr_Dorchadon
Summary: Carrot/Vimes, explicit, not slowburn, but no sex in the first few chapters and a tiny bit of angst.
Relationships: Carrot Ironfoundersson/Samuel Vimes
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

"Carrot." Samuel Vimes said, blowing a smoke circle in the air, his new black shoes glistening with polish on his desk as he lay back in the setting winter sun that streamed into his office. There was no one else in the Watch House today – everyone else had families or holidays (and in the cases of constables Dorfl, Visit and Shoe, a religious debate in Sator Square)

"Yes, sir?" Carrot asked, applying verbal punctuation as only he could.

"Carrot. Do you know why I've called you up to my office?"

"No, sir – but I could hazard a guess."

"Hazard away."

"Where, sir?" Carrot looked side to side and immediately jumped into that ready position that all policemen throughout the multiverse have when faced with unknown dangers – that is legs wide apart to sportingly allow the danger a chance at a one blow victory. And for the copper to fall over and not get stabbed, hopefully.

"It was a figure of speech." Vimes sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He took another puff from his cigar. The mixture of smoke and shoe polish was a heady one – and made all the stronger by the perfume of Nobby Nobbs who had been in the office a mere hour ago. It usually took days to get rid of the smell of Nobby and his infamous klatchian perfumes. "I meant", he continued, "that you ought to give it a guess."

"Give what a guess, sir?" the six foot ginger dwarf asked. Carrot was not stupid. He just had an intelligence that didn't change direction. And that caused a very certain kind of stupidity available only to the extremely logical.

"Guess the reason as to why I've called you into my office." Samuel told him, distracted by the smell in the room. "And can you smell that?"

"Smell what sir?"

"That smell. It's like someone set fire to Nobby's perfume bottles."

Carrot looked horrified "Sir, I'm sure that's in breach of fire codes."

"I'm sure it is. Well nevermind. Anyway the reason I've brought you up is that I've got a job for you. Or more correctly, a set of jobs."

"Yessir." Carrot saluted, eyes fixated on a point just above Vimes' left ear.

That smell was strong – something close to burning perfume in a boot polish factory and a hint of something else. It wasn't his shoes, because otherwise Sybil would have seized on that like an olfactory hawk that morning when he put them on.

"Captain, are you sure you can't smell that?"

"Now that you mention it sir, yes I do." Carrot sniffed deeply and looked about the room, his, well, carrot coloured hair shining in the sunlight. Samuel was glad that the captain was casting a silhouette onto him, because the way that Carrot buffed his armour generally made it want to stay buffed (and consequently meant that it had to be dirtied in order to prevent accidental fires from reflected sunlight). "I have no idea where it is coming from."

"Me neither captain." Vimes puffed his cigar and continued, rather distractedly because he'd just felt himself getting hard from breathing it in, "Sorry. Erm, where was I?"  
"Jobs for me sir?" Carrot stared fuzzily at the wall, as though he too could not concentrate because of the smell.

"Ah yes. Those. Now you'll be working with Vetinari's Dark Clerks," (the lucky bastards, he thought to himself) ", to...erm...draw up all the old fire and traffic regulations from antiquity. You are to drop all other responsibilities and.....errr...I will....um...delegate them appropriately whilst you spend the next two weeks up at the Palace."

"Okay, hmmm, sir. When do I start?"

"Tomorrow. Errmm....six in the morning." Vimes was finding it really hard to keep track of his thoughts. And to his horror, found stray ones commenting about the shape of Carrot and how lucky those damn clerks would be to see him over the next two weeks.

"Yessir." Carrot's voice trembled as he breathed in deeply to steady himself. This made him tremble even harder.

"You. You. Are. Wossname. Um."

"Dis-dismissed?" They were both visibly shaking now, Vimes because of his thoughts and presumably Carrot had similarly lost control.

"Yar. Thassit."

"Er. Carrot." something said in Samuel Vimes' voice. His grace, the Duke of Ankh, slapped his hand over his mouth so hard it stung.

"Y-y-yes sir?" Carrot could hardly stay still and was leaning on the door for support.

"C-c-close the door." said that voice again. In his head it said a number of things about Carrot.

Carrot closed the door.

Vimes stood up, much against his own volition. A warm pink cloud was everywhere. Surrender it said. "No, you bastard or bitch" Vimes told it aloud.

"What!" Carrot shouted, perhaps a little loudly because he winced at the volume of his own voice, as if he wasn't making that happen.

"Respect your betters, captain! Don't say what!" the mouth of Vimes said, quite without consent of the brain. Surrender said the warm pink cloud.

Carrot's pale freckled skin flushed red and he strode around the desk and bodily held Vimes above the floor, he forearm bearing down onto Vimes' chest. His face was mere centimetres from that of Vimes and each breathed in deeply the smell of the other. "I am your better," Carrot spoke in a deadly calm voice enunciating each syllable with precision, "you bast–"

Vimes' mouth was around his before either could stop. "Hmm." Vimes breathed, dropping his guard and letting in the pink cloud.

Carrot dropped Vimes to the floor and pushed the smaller man backwards onto his desk, sending all of Vimes' papers flying to the floor. Smells flooded into Samuel's mouth; perfume, smoke, sweat, polishes, meats, mints, honey and, strangely, petrol. The tall dwarf pushed hard onto Vimes until both could hardly breath anymore. This only made Vimes kiss him harder, pull Carrot harder onto himself. His fingers had found the straps in Carrot's armour and were beginning to pull them away just as Carrot started to do the same to him.

Carrot was first to pull away.

"Commander?" he whispered in horror.

"Captain." Vimes blinked, breathed in deeply and followed this up with "Fuck me."

"That would be ill advised Commander."

"If you aren't going to, then please get off of me."

"Yessir." Carrot staggered to standing and helped Samuel up as well. "Sir, what was –"

"No." Vimes cut him off for the second time that evening. "This did not happen. We're both extremely tired and already attached to two very undeserving women. This did not happen." The pink cloud had gone and only bile remained. That and the various smells and tastes of Carrot which did not help matters. Vimes felt weak.

"They. Yes. Lady Sybil and Angua don't need to know." Carrot was shaking, he breath ragged and his immaculate hair sticking out where at one point Vimes had pulled at it.

"No-one needs to know. This did not happen."

"No sir." Carrot looked awful, which was hard for such a person and Vimes dreaded to look in a mirror and see what he looked like then. "I'll be going."

"Yes. Goodnight Carrot."

"Goodnight Commander."


	2. Fuck it all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carrot spends a couple weeks off with Vetinari's clerks and then goes missing...

A very loud "FUCK IT ALL!!" was heard all through the Watch House after Captain Carrot slammed the door shut behind him. Vimes opened the windows and the last echoes of this war cry filtered out into the midnight rush hour of Ankh-Morpork. A few mischievous vestiges filtered down into the darkness of the cellars under cellars – the Ankh-Morpork that the city was built upon – never to be seen again. The blind old mice down there were certainly surprised. But then they always were.

"Fuck it all." Sam Vimes muttered viciously into his arms as he curled up on his chair and fell asleep at his desk. Dreams of Sybil and Angua shouting at him haunted him until the morning.

Carrot did not swear, as a rule. Right now though, he really,really wanted to. "Fooey" he said quietly as a compromise.

Foul Ole Ron, now third degree lurker, was sat in a nearby alley waiting for his smell to catch up to him and heard this said by Carrot as he walked past that alley. The eyes of the old beggar shot open with an explosion of mindless fear. He ran off to tell the Patrician, all buggrits and millenniums forgotten completely.

Carrot, of course, didn't notice any of this in his rage and slipped back into the policeman's stroll, one foot slowly in front of the other. Of all the improper things that he could have done! Dwarves, it is well known, do not see sex. But what is less known is that they have Views on sex too, like the number of males and females and the ratio thereof. Needless to say, precursors to that wonderful activity had to, in the mind of a dwarf, stay between a dwarf and his spouse, providing that the spouse was female but didn't show it. Cross and ashamed, he strolled right into his flat and slammed the door gently, which is to say it woke up half the neighbourhood.

Sitting down onto his bed, Carrot Ironfounderson shed the first tears he'd ever had since leaving the mountains. He had done something unspeakable. His mzhrubv was broken. He hadn't stopped Vimes. And then he'd joined in, loving every second of it. He knew it now, what he was. So he said it quietly to himself, in English then in dwarfish: "I am a bad dwarf."

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

"Sir? Sir? Sir!" the voice of Cheery Longbottom greeted the waking brain of Samuel Vimes when the morning came.

"Fuck." Sam groaned softly, cricking himself upright and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "What time is it, Corporal?"

"Errm. About seven a.m." she said, glancing at her watch.

"Okay. And is Carrot here yet?"

"No."

"Good."

"Sir." Cheery said, standing straight like a three foot ruler.

"He's supposed to be at the Palace for the next two weeks." Vimes explained "Notify the rotary officer that Carrot is off duty this fortnight."

"I'll remember to tell Detritus, sir. Sir?"

"That was a question. What is it?"

"Sir, with all due respect, you don't look so good. Shall I send a runner over to the Ramkin residence to get breakfast and such?"

"My wife has told you spy on me, hasn't she?" Vimes groaned.

"Yessir. When a Ramkin tells you, you stay told."

"Don't I know it." Vimes chuckled. Then he yawned and leant back in his chair. "Okay. Send that runner, thank you Cheery."

"You're welcome, sir."

And with that, Vimes was alone with his thoughts again. His thoughts and his memories – of the previous evening. Vimes groaned loudly, took his helmet off and bashed his head into the table. What has he been thinking??? What was wrong with him? Shouting at Carrot! Then kissing him??? No. He must be out of his mind. He bashed his head again twice for good measure. Thinking about Carrot made him hard all over again – as did thinking about what they'd done together. Damn it all. What the hell was wrong with him? With them both?

Sam groaned again, at least he'd have two weeks to get over all of this and forget it. Craving distraction, he sighed and began work on his mountains of paperwork.

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

It was all so very tempting for Carrot. So very very tempting. His watch-issued rope sat at the bottom of his cupboard because never in all the days he'd worked for the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had he ever needed it. Not even when Foul Ole Ron had tried some slab and needed to be restrained by Carrot and a troll – a feet indeed for any individual smaller than a giant.

But no. Carrot couldn't. He was needed everywhere all the time. Like the Dwarf Bread Museum. And all the foot-the-ball matches in the community. And the Watch House. And he needed to be at the palace in half an hour. Too much to do. Even the worst dwarfs had other things to do.

"Not today, Agi Hammerthief." he said quietly.

No? Maybe tomorrow, the pink cloud said. The self same pink cloud that he'd fallen prey to in Commander Vimes' office.

No. Today Carrot was going to go work with Vetinari's clerks. And so he did, because personal was not the same as important.

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

A week elapsed like this. Vimes was irate, but in turns gradually became less so. The dreadful pink cloud didn't return and no-one could remember having seen one – except for the Alchemist's Guild because they generally produced any and all varieties of smokey clouds. But all the same, Vimes did not suspect them. Carrot spent his first week drawing up maps as best as he could remember then discussing roads and climates with a couple of weasel-ish young men every day.

And the second week turned out to be much like the first. And both were soon over.

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

"Sir?" Cheery asked at the door to Vimes' office.

"Yes, corporal?" he replied.

"Well. Um. Sir. Have you seen Carrot today?"

"No."

"Well. He was supposed to come and see you today."

"Yes."

"Only."

"Only what, Corporal?"

Cheery came in and shut the door behind her. She walked over to beside Sam and told him. "Only no-one's seen him since yesterday when he left the Palace, not even Angua. We're all a little worried to be honest."

"Damn." Vimes slapped his desk and stood up. "Cheery. Has anyone been to the captain's house yet?"

"Yessir. He's not there. Angua can't find him. He didn't go back there last night."

"Any clues?"

"None, sir. But we've got all available Watchmen out looking for him anyways. But no-one's seen him."

"No-one? How can he go about in a city of millions unseen when he's on first name terms with everyone!?" Vimes shouted, a little too loudly for Cheery had to massage the hearing back into her ears.

"We don't know sir."

"Come on, then. Let's go have a look."

"Where sir?" Cheery was running to keep up with Vimes at that point.

"Where no-one will have looked."


	3. Carrots and Lettuces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Carrot goes missing....

"Now is as good a time as any." Carrot whispered to himself, surrendering completely to the pink cloud.

****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

"Commander, where are we going?" Both Cheery and Sam were sprinting as fast as possible along Ankh-Morpork's maze of alleyways and back streets to get to where Sam thought that Carrot would end up.

"The river." he replied breathlessly.

Cheery gasped and stumbled before catching up again. "Sir!" she said horrified as they carried on running.

The river Ankh was a river so thick and polluted with all the various mucks that the underbelly of civilisation produced that it was possible to walk along it on a hot day, providing you had tight fitting shoes on and were walking at a fair pace. Beigey brown, it meandered through the city with the speed (and texture) of an obese aging slug.

"Cheery!" Vimes called over his shoulder to the dwarfish lady before waiting for her to stagger to a still position just to his left. "Cheery. We're at the midpoint of the river here. You go down its course, I'll go up. When you reach the sea, if you haven't found....just turn back and head to back psuedopolis yard for further instruction."

"Yessir!" Cheery saluted smartly, but with a tone that hinted at her fear, worry and misgivings.

Vimes couldn't give a damn, he was too worried himself. That boy, the young lad that had come to him to be made a man of. His father was a dwarf king, and he suspected that the man---dwarf, whatever---- might call Vetinari when word reached him. But that wasn't the foremost concern for Blackboard Monitor Vimes, he was still very much unsure about all of it. The smooching, the emotions, the irreparable relationship, he wasn't ready to process it himself yet and maybe he'd never be. But damn him, fate, the disc and damn the gods especially if Carrot did what he suspected he might do. No! You can't think like that if you want to carry on. And so Vimes shoved those thoughts into the deepest recesses of his mind.

All the while these thoughts swirled about, Samuel was tracking the swirls and pools in the slug-like Ankh for signs of Carr---of a bod---of a thing. Signs of a thing. But he couldn't and didn't find any. It took him hours, until dark and still a while afterwards. The wintry gloom, lit by gas lamps and torches, concealed the far bank, but Vimes stubbornly decided to check all the way upriver to the sluice gates and then cross over to work his way down the other side of the river. Nothing. No body, nothing at all. Not even a trolley with a sack in it.

He headed back to the Yard, gravitated towards the whiskey draw and, by no volition of his own, downed four bottles of Lankey's Finest Ankh Moonshine. He was inebriated back to the point of sobriety by the time Cheery knocked on the door and stepped in.

"Sir." she quavered, saluting. "Nothing. Not a body, no corpse, no word of Carrot even. Nothing at all. No-one even remembers seeing him today."

"Fuck. Shit. Damn. Fuck." Vimes collapsed at his desk, his head on the table and a fifth bottle opened but undrunk.

****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The whole of Ankh-morpork had been roped in eventually to look for Carrot, the petty-minded as much as the self-serving, even the rich bastards in Ankh strolled down the street to have a look and order their lackeys to search harder. Ordinarily, the streets of the Big Wahooney teemed with throngs of merchants and ne'er-do-wells and con artists -- but not that week. The entire city entered a state of quasi-panic for their Friendly Neighbourhood Watchman, and missives and searches had been conducted along all the roads and paths leading out of the city.

Vimes was thoroughly and utterly pessimistic and Sybil was worried, because her Samuel wasn't the sort to give up. But here he was, lying face-down on the mattress and refusing to even go out and check, on the reasoning that if Carrot could have been found, he would have been. Even the wizards couldn't get a lock on his location.

****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Down on the dark and dreary streets, in amongst the rat pools and cess pits and assorted unidentified trash bags (at least one could hope that's what they were, hard to tell a head from a head of lettuce in the miasma-clouded caliginy). Sauntering between piles of....piles and, hopefully, litter, a trench-coated figure stepped over to kick a groaning pile. The figure was of the lovely variety of human being that would do this, just on the principle that lying on the ground and groaning was asking for it. To be fair, in Ankh-Morpork, they practically were. Anybody and any body in the gutters quickly learnt to stay silent. Leg poised to strike, the figure was given over to a flash of relative chivalry and good sense: without losing balance, they angled their boot and swept off the pile of paper, banana skins and general debris. They gasped and yelled aloud.

"Carrot!!! CARROT!! Everybody, come quick! It's Carrot!!" Dennis Lowlife Creepy Sod Parker shouted. "It's Carrot!!!" In ordinary circumstances, his shouts would have been ignored, but his voice rang with such perfect and utter sincerity where normally he could make the truth sound exaggerated that Emergency Captain Detritus (temporarily promoted by Vimes -- via Cheery seeing as he was too busy, running down every lead, to promote Detritus himself) strode into the alleyway off St.Deidre Road only to stumble back in shock and them launch forwards in relief and joy with the force of a hurricane on Madam Ogg's Dark Ale.

Carrot's limp and temporarily vacant body was borne up by the mountainous hands of Detritus and paraded to general civic joy all the way back to Psuedopolis Yard. Cheery choked on her dwarf ale and then leapt up in relief before speeding to the Ramkin residence to tell the Commander.

No-one even noticed the Watch-issue rope around his neck or the lamppost with a suspicious pink cloud over it, with bits of rope attached to the top.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for getting this far, I am gonna get chapter 2 out some time next week.


End file.
